Wild footage has been captured of a climate change protester being thrown off the stage and onto the ground while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was speaking at a presidential campaign event in Iowa.
Mr. DeSantis was speaking to several hundred people at an Ames barbecue restaurant Thursday night when three people, believed to be Sunrise Movement activists, yelled at him and accused him of taking money from the fossil fuel industry. .
“Excuse me, wait a minute. Excuse me, I'm doing this,” DeSantis snapped at the interruption. “I know you have plans. Stop!”
The Republican presidential candidate told the crowd that protesters wanted people to “pay more for gas.”
“You can't let people like that win,” he said to cheers.
A second protester then rushed onto the stage holding a banner reading “DESANTIS: Climate Crime.''
“Ron DeSantis is a climate change criminal!” the man yelled, confused. Video shared on X.
Almost as soon as the protester took the stage, at least two members of the security team grabbed him, tackled him off the stage and pinned him to the ground.
“This is Exhibit A of what's wrong with the university system,” the governor said to cheers, but there was no clear indication that the young protesters were college students. Ames is home to Iowa State University.
“If he was going to do that, he was like stumbling around trying to take the flag off. It's like he telegraphed a mile away,” DeSantis said of the tackled demo. said disparagingly to the participants.
Immediately after the woman was dragged out, there were screams from the crowd.
DeSantis, who had debated former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley the day before, continued speaking before taking questions about his policy positions.
“We're always taking questions from people,” DeSantis later told reporters. “Oh, we're not going to rush these insensitive guys onto the stage or anything like that, but I mean people who ask normal, respectful questions. We're happy to I agree.”
The Sunshine State governor was on a whirlwind tour of Iowa in the final run-up to the Iowa caucuses on January 15th, and was participating in his fourth event of the day.
The Sunrise Movement, a nonprofit group aimed at combating climate change, also interrupted DeSantis during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday. According to the Washington Examiner.
The organization describes itself on its website as a “movement of young people fighting to stop the climate crisis and win a new green deal” and “end the era of fossil fuel elites and We work to force governments to invest in people, brown people, and workers. -Class community. ”
with post wire
